Returning to his residence on Dorset, Ethan rummaged through the clothing he bought. The materials used for the trousers, vests and coats were rough, scratchy to the touch, no doubt the same material his bed sheets were designed from. The shirts and ties were made from flimsy cloth that would surely stain and wear down within weeks. He would definitely need to visit the tailor again over the next two months. At least he’d blend in with the locals, assuming the role in an unassuming way.
On the way to his room he’d paid yet another disinterested innkeeper for another night’s stay. A younger lad, it mattered not. A paid innkeeper is a happy innkeeper. Once again avoiding any unwanted attention as he made his way up the stairwell, Ethan decided to sequester himself in his room for a while, taking some time to try on his new clothing and acclimate to the itchy fabric in private. As predicted, from the moment he slipped on the shirt and pulled up the trousers, his tender skin reacted to the offense. So began the scratching. He began to peel the clothes from his body, an instant relief. Ethan made light of it when an unexpected epiphany came to light. He chuckled softly, considering the notion that there might be a fringe benefit with these untenable trousers. Scratching various portions of his anatomy in public might draw some unwanted attention or may work in the reverse, warding off people who might fear he had an infectious rash! Absolutely no reason to torture himself while in the privacy of his own room, his cotton briefs and undershirt would do him well for the time being. A sudden pang of regret, Ethan wished Colin was there with him so they could both have a good laugh over it together.
Time enough for a short nap before dinner, Ethan crawled into bed. He’d meant to log his activities into his journal but decided to do it later, knowing he’d spend a great deal of time writing once the morning of August 31st arrived and he’d witness the first slaying of Jack the Ripper’s victims. He would be quite busy logging those observations into his journal, keeping him tucked away in his room and out of sight for the better part of each day. There would be plenty of time to record every event, as his interactions were already impaled in his memory, easy to recall. He was tired.
In the midst of his dreams, Ethan had something similar to that cross between actual experience and subconscious creation occur. At one point he dreamt of being a celebrity, walking the red carpet, the multitude of photographers taking snapshots like the ones beside Princess Diana’s Mercedes. Cameras flashing, going off like a thousand lightning strikes, it was a constant barrage, only brighter, more akin to the flash when crossing through the Flicker. In fact, exactly like that but over and over, repeating like an instant replay of the event. Yet, he kept on walking as if the Flicker doorway never ended. The red carpet beneath his shoes suddenly sounded like liquid, as if he was stepping in puddles and indeed, as he looked down, realizing the carpet was flowing with blood. Although he stopped walking, he could hear the footsteps of someone behind him. As the tempo of these steps increased, his brain told him to pick up the pace. Run! But the blood was getting stickier, making it harder to lift his feet. The heavier his feet felt the faster the running came from behind. He had no strength left in his legs. Just as he was about to collapse, the bloody carpet came to an abrupt end and the source of the crimson path was revealed. Just ahead, crawling away in terror was the one-legged tailor, Mr. Clemens, his wooden leg gone, blood pouring from the stump. He looked back at Ethan, horrified. No. Wait. He was not looking at Ethan, he was looking past him at whatever was running up behind him, catching up rapidly. Ethan felt the same compelling need to look over his shoulder. As he did so, an arctic chill ran down his spine, an absolute loss of logic. Out of the shadows, splashing over the bloody path was Mr. Clemens! No! It was Mr. Drakes! Wielding a blood-drenched knife, laughing maniacally in a high-pitched squeal, he was moving very quickly in spite of his short little legs, coming directly toward Ethan! Turning to run, the blood had dried and he was stuck in it. Coagulated, glued to his feet, Ethan was frozen in place, no escape. He tried yelling but no sound came forth. In front of him, Clemens was gone and in his place was all of his forensic evidence, photographs from the desk in his bedroom at Oxford. Losing his equilibrium, Ethan fell forward onto the pictures, coming face-to-face with Jack the Ripper’s victims, his hands landing on the pictures that seemed to be floating atop the pool of blood. So was he, bobbing on the surface and trying to use the photographs as floatation devices. He pawed at them like some frantic animal drowning, attempting to make it to shore but there was no shoreline, just blood and the autopsy images beginning to transform into motion pictures with sound. Their corpses began looking at Ethan and screaming at him over and over again, “He’s coming for you! He’s coming for you!” Just as Ethan was about to ask them WHO was coming for him, he felt someone grabbing him by the back of his hair. For that moment, just a fraction of a second, he thought it was somebody pulling him from the murky red death, until he felt the blade touch his throat. All Ethan could do was stare at the images as they looked back at him with soulful remorse, his own blood spraying all over them to such an extent, he could no longer see their faces. Drakes pulled at Ethan’s hair harder, causing him to stare upward into the dark, starless sky. Severing his head from his neck, the geyser of blood shot straight up and back onto his face like a rainfall. Drakes continued to laugh as all Ethan could see was the man’s face, his own blood raining down. Raining on him. Raining. “Holy fuck! It’s raining in my room!” Ethan came out of his dream to find himself drenched to the skin from leaks in the ceiling. It had begun to pour during his nap, syphoning down from the fourth floor. In any other scenario this would have been upsetting, but for him, it was a blessing. He’d kept his head through the ordeal. The curse had been the nightmare coming out of nowhere in the middle of the day.
Ethan immediately reached for his timepiece. Luckily, it was still in the pocket of his vest safely draped over the night table and not exposed to the inside waterfall. Checking the time, it was just past four in the afternoon. Most of the leak was near the wooden headboard dripping down the wall, forming a half moon shape on the ceiling around the size of a saucer. The dream, a bona fide nightmare left him sitting on the edge at the foot of the bed, away from the leak, soaked at his feet as the water puddled, failing to drain down through the floorboards to the second floor. Instead, it accumulated, certain to make it quite slippery and tricky to maneuver once he had to move around the room. So, for the present, he stayed put, deciding how to resolve the omnipresent dilemma overhead.
Still shaken, stirred by the imagery his mind could conceive, it could have only been some side effect of the Flicker. He used both hands to wipe away the rainwater dripping from his hair and forehead, smearing it over his eyes and face in an attempt to clear the images from his mind. It did not help. The picture of swimming in blood permeated the pores of his skin. He decided to clean up for dinner. Pulling the bed away from the waterfall wall while minding his footing on the trackless wet floor, he flipped the mattress over and around so any part of the cotton stuffing that still remained drenched went to the foot of the bed. Most of his new clothing was still wrapped in the brown paper sack on the top of the desk against the opposite wall. He unwrapped them and separated the items by shirts, trousers, vests, hat and coats. Looking for the best matching collaboration of each item, he picked out his evening wear then refolded what he did not need. More than anything else, Ethan needed to wash away that dream. A man prone to self-reflection, he had to consider where in bloody hell it came from! Jack the Ripper could be anyone he’d passed on the street!
Usually, every floor of a lodging house had a community bath where the tenants could go clean up or shave using a large water basin that had to be hauled down to a pump in the street, then heated. Within that basin lay the contents of a self-body wash and shave, normally in that sequence. Dental hygiene would not be discovered for another twenty years or so. Ethan would have to use a combination of soap and peroxide and a cloth for his teeth. The privy was a publicly shared outhouse, a shed with a
single box, a hole cut into it and was located in the alley behind the building. Ethan was well aware of the barbaric conditions compared to the year he’d stepped out of, but the true reality always seemed to revert back to the indescribable stench.
Having completed the somewhat daunting task of performing personal hygiene in the year 1888, it was time for him to don his authentic, not-tailored-for-him attire. A size larger, more than a century behind his normal threads, he looked as verifiably local as anyone he’d seen without seeing himself in a mirror, but he felt more of an uncomfortable synchronicity with the history he was living in. The only remnant of his doctor’s attire were the shoes. Perhaps in his procrastination was an impending sense of dread, anguish associated with wearing any indigenous footwear. Not the best conditions to break in a new pair considering how much stealthy footwork was ahead of him, numerous trips scheduled over the next nine weeks or so. His wasn’t an unreasonable expectation of blisters and pain. The notion of wearing itchy socks inside unpadded soles brought a sense of foreboding to his psyche. For the moment he would enjoy the one creature comfort remaining.
Many a time in a man’s life when, from such a primal place as the male ego, he finds everything rides on a moment. How quickly it shatters like glass. In an instant, it is put together like a steel frame. The male ego is the biggest, most sensitive organ of his anatomy. Dressed in his new timeline attire, Ethan ate a huge piece of humble pie. A necessary evil for the sake of anonymity in his research, but for a man of few vanities, this was rough, though not nearly as rough as the feel of the fabric against the hair on his body. He walked around attempting to adjust to the prickly sensation. Even though he kept the comfortable underwear on, from the upper thigh down the material declared war on Ethan’s leg hair. More like a tug-of-war with every strand. The more he focused on it, the worse it became. Somewhere between pinching and scratching came an absurdly brief period of relief, followed by the next distracting, annoying tingle. If he couldn’t find the will to resist reacting, people would, indeed, clear a path for him! It couldn’t be a more perfectly unplanned plan.
With his medical bag safely locked away in the vault, identification papers with him, the only things Ethan had no choice but to leave in his room while he went out for dinner were the clothes off his back, the comfortable outfit he wore for the jump and these lesser quality replacements. Neatly folded on the desk, he could only hope his paranoia about an innkeeper with sticky fingers was far from the truth. The rain had begun to subside while he was washing up. Something told him stopping at the manager’s window to bring the leak to his attention would be a fruitless endeavor, a waste of his breath. He chose to make as little noise as possible, saying nothing.
Locking the room door behind him, Ethan was eager for dinner back at the Ten Bells Pub. With any luck, he would navigate the one street journey without any of the previous attention he’d received earlier in the day. Stepping past the innkeeper’s cubbyhole, nodding to one of the familiar managers, he stepped onto Dorset Street and made an immediate left toward the corner. Using the hat he’d bought to obscure part of his face, looking down at the ground felt covert, adding an extra asset to his subterfuge while out in public. Blending into the surroundings, his main objective, the need to remain faceless and nameless was critical to the mission. Except for the nasty names he was called once he’d reached the corner of Dorset and Commercial Street, an altercation he couldn’t avoid. Head down, appearing a little too much like a spy, Ethan almost knocked over a lady as she rounded the corner, toting a sack of potatoes among other things. She couldn’t see any better than he could, considering what she had in her arms but he definitely caught the blame for the contact.
“You bloody twit! Are you daft or just a witless bugger?”
“Apologies, m’ lady, ‘twas my honest mistake.” Tipping his hat to her, yielding the path as he tried out his even older English accent, she seemed to accept it.
“Honestly, toss off if you know what’s good for you!” She scolded the man.
Tipping his hat once again, he fit right in! The woman huffed off to his right as Ethan turned left onto Commercial Street, heading toward his dining destination. If for a second he’d smiled at the encounter with the lady it was because this bump in the night was the first time Ethan felt like he could really pull it off without a hitch. What he said to Colin in that little room at the LHC compound needed to be said to his friend, but Ethan knew he would run into variables of an unexpected nature and would have to think quickly on his feet, adapting to situations, as necessary. It was literally his first obstacle while in his new change of clothes and it went quite well.
For the remainder of his short walk to the Ten Bells Pub, Ethan appeared to be no different than anyone else strolling this main road. Commercial Street was abuzz with activity at the time, characters on foot and horseback alike, making their way to some destination of importance or profit. In the 19th Century in East End London the only true and constant form of entertainment for its inhabitants and visitors alike was, well, themselves. In a day one could witness musicians, protestors, lobbyists, lawmen, pickpockets, prostitutes and orphans running amok. It was one tremendous opportunity for opportunists to gain capital and for those breaking the law to receive swift justice. Oh, there were simply those trying to get through the day going from their job to home hopefully without incident, but the best military obstacle courses paled in comparison to the amount of ducking and dodging required in this part of one of the largest, most populated cities in the world, successfully avoiding the law breakers while evading the law keepers. Life in the Whitechapel district was not for the meek or faint of heart. It was dangerous to speak with strangers or worse yet, to ignore one’s immediate surroundings. To do so could prove perilous when on every corner, in every dark alleyway, a predator was waiting for the right prey to pass by.
Ethan’s research had indeed given him an advantage, knowing the considerable historical record of lawlessness, who exactly to watch out for while in the company of thieves and scoundrels. Reaching his destination he’d navigated the task without incident and arrived fully intact. The pub was far more active for the evening meal and drink than earlier in the day. The staff was four or more times the number there to serve him previously. Barmaids making their way through crowds, heaving mugs of drink above patron’s heads, heaving their breasts into the men, a gratuitous tactic to up their gratuity. Ethan looked for a familiar face but did not see his server from breakfast. He assumed she had finished her shift.
“Seat yourself, love. Someone will be with ya.” A voice came from the crowd. Momentary eye contact confirmed that the barmaid was speaking to him. Ethan had to acknowledge that message, so he waved, no point in trying to converse. Looking around he saw nothing free. Most of the center of the room was furnished with long warped wooden benches and beverage stained tables, all appearing quite occupied. As he walked along the length of the pub he spotted a small nook in the back with a block table and two chairs. Making a slalom motion through several intoxicated patrons, he was able to claim the small space as his own. Many town folk frequented the Ten Bells for the chance to mingle, grumble, gripe and drink away their troubles of the day. Ethan hoped being blocked from view in his little corner didn’t mean he would be ignored, neither seen nor served.
Although his schedule was not highly regimented over the next two days, Ethan certainly needed to eat well before his reconnoiter of the Bucks Row area later on, and more coffee was an absolute necessity. He was slightly relieved his first cup of coffee in this century (that morning) was not as dreadful as expected. It was a strong mix, a blend of chicory coffee, hot tea water and most likely, mud. A bit gritty, but it did the trick as a caffeine fix. A woman artfully dodging in and out of the crowd, she approached, spotting Ethan tucked away in the innocuous nook.
“Evenin’, sir. Ya fancy food or drink?”
“Coffee. Please. To start.”
Off she went as quickly as she’d arrived. Ethan pu
lled out his journal and began to review his prior entry when the server returned, cup in hand.
“So, feeling a bit peckish, are we?” She asked with seemingly genuine interest.
“Perhaps an idea of what’s good?” Ethan curiously inquired.
“Are we still talkin’ ‘bout food, sir?”
Ethan’s expression turned from confusion to discomfort as he realized she was hitting on him, offering more than a hot meal. The woman sensed his awkwardness. Although enjoying the tease, she got right down to business.
“We gots duck, rabbit or chicken with carrots, onions n’ potatoes. Ya could try our ‘three penny ordinary’ if ya like. It’s a meat in broth n’ a beer. Don’t know if ya can afford more than that, sir.” The server spoke with an empathy in her voice. She probably went hungry in her life, couldn’t even afford to eat where she worked.
Her indelicate statement was music to her patron’s ears. Ethan realized she was referring to his clothing. It worked!
“That sounds just fine, thank you.” Ethan said. “I’ll try the chicken.”
As his server headed to the kitchen Ethan pondered the next meal of his travels. It had been over twelve hours since the jump and he needed nourishment before his work tonight. Based upon his reaction to the first smell of the land, he’d anticipated as unpleasant a surprise with the first taste of it but his breakfast had been delicious, reason enough to return to Ten Bells for dinner. When his server returned with the big bowl of broth filled with meat and fresh vegetables, along with a slice of fresh bread, the aroma was the most appealing he’d experienced thus far. He dug right in and the first bite had him intrigued and delighted in equal measure.
“How did you cook this?” Ethan questioned, hovering his nose over the bowl.
The server looked puzzled by the question, wondering if he noticed or intended to object to the substitution. “Why it’s boiled, sir, for hours by now, I s’pose.”
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